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As of today, I’ve been a part of Magnaquest Technologies for one year and I gotta tell that this year flew fast, very fast in fact. From the day my boss, a 40 yr old super aggressive who is an avid yoga practitioner and cyclist hired me after getting me to meet equally enthusiastic first stage entrepreneurs on the board, with Global business plans, massive website revamp, numerous partnerships, countless coffee discussions on lead generation thrown in it feels like many things happened so soon and so fast. On a cool rainy evening, after a large cup of steaming coffee, along with a sense of accomplishment comes introspection. All my South Indian coffee lover friends would agree with me. Here are my revelations

Mid-size Software Product Company is very different from large ones:

I started my career with the largest and most successful IT organization in India and it was an awesome place to be. I had numerous fabulous opportunities to learn the right way to do things. I was too hungry to learn things my way and wanted that ‘kick’ in tasting success my way. I moved to emerging start-ups and mid-size IT companies where things are different than those in large ones. At Magnaquest marketing, we are like a fast-food joint on wheels. The demands change, the pricing changes, the ‘right’ ways to do things change. Basically, change is constant. Sometimes, some products need to be re-engineered, sometimes new technology needs to be adopted, and many a times the need of the customer is no longer the same when we started planning. In short, it is not a cake-walk for marketing folks here and definitely crazy. We test our methods, succeed or fail, re-tune the machine and run it again to test it. Sometimes it is well-thought through decision and sometimes it is just gut feel. We wanted to do it anyways as it is the better thing to do than being an exact copy of someone else’s excel workbook. That is liberating but also a lot of hard work.

What Makes it Special? – The timing!

It is a special time to be associated with Magnaquest. It is in a super growth phase where all the teams are growing in size and all geared up to plan to achieve exponential growth rates in terms of revenue, customer base as well as profitability in the immediate years to come. I have had a reputation of being an extremely aggressive woman who never takes a “can’t be done” as an answer neither from self nor from the system that I am working in. For me, being in Magnaquest in these times is like having 50% of Facebook stake overnight.

What I love the most here?

Of course, the Marketing team. Our chairman, Mr. Vijay Debbad was the one who envisioned the whole and marketing team here couple of years back my boss, Mr. Ramakrishna was the one who set it up.. Do I mean that there was no Marketing team before he joined? Hell No! Marketing activities were done but perhaps not in the scale that it had to be at times. We are a bunch of crazy junta who loves to experiment, fail, but get up , go back to the white board and build the plan again sometimes from scratch too. I get goose bumps when I hear the stories my team shares with me be it about a market, a hiking trip or about the scandals in the political houses. We are story tellers and we do it the best. That’s what pushes me to office on a Monday morning. Purely fun!

What have I learnt in this one year

First of all I have to tell something about me. I am super selfish….Shhh!

I take learning from every challenge that I face in life. I believe that adversity is a state of mind and everything that we come across is a learning opportunity. It is just a matter of perspective change.

I learnt multi-tasking, with panache. I learnt to work with some of the most awesome people in the industry as well as hard nuts. I learnt to develop a sense of belongingness as well the ability to detach whenever it is necessary. I learnt to lead by example, take feedback constructively and above all have a vision for Magnaquest, for our team and for myself. Did the ecosystem help me to learn all these things? Yes! Am I becoming a better person? Oh yeah! Nailed it!

Learning, Sharing and Growing

This has always my work mantra and should tell you, it is working amazingly well here. Maganquest has a good mix of old timers and the new lateral entrants at different positions in the organizations. It has become a good blend of innovative thinking, new ideas and at the same time the experience of what works and what doesn’t in certain markets. We discuss out strategies in length, do not hesitate to brainstorm for hours to attain perfection in the plan, no strings attached to a method or idea, thrash out the entire plan if we ourselves are not 100% confident about it. Not that we are not risk takers, but every risk is thought through, calculated and hence there is always a Plan B so that the outcome is not affected almost all the times. Monitoring the initiatives correctly, questioning the obvious and reading between the lines is embedded into our DNA. Now, do not tell me that it is not exciting!

The Year that would be

I’m really excited to see what the next year has in store for me and Maganquest Technologies. I’ve had the pleasure to re-launch the Broadband Business Plan with my team and talk about our strengths in broadband billing at various conferences. I’ve met so many great people who love what we do, and folks whose work I admire. The past one year has given me enough energy to propel into the months to come at jet speeds to establish ourselves and question our competitors. Hope you enjoy your workplace and work just as we do here. Wherever you are, wish you an exciting workplace and fulfilling day every day. Hope you find your love soon and cherish the one that you have now.